Curtain Call
by Min Daae
Summary: They were not children, and as he threw aside the last block of shattered concrete between himself and his brother, Thor knew that even with a hand to pull him up, Loki was not going to rise.


By the time he reached Loki, it was already too late.

For a moment, he thought otherwise. He could hear Loki laughing, the kind of soft, weary chuff he'd always made when they were young and he'd lost a particularly rough training bout. He would lie there for a moment, groan, huff a laugh and say, "Ah, very well, I accept defeat _this _time, brother, but the next-"

Not this time.

They were not children, and as he threw aside the last block of shattered concrete between himself and his brother, Thor knew that even with a hand to pull him up, Loki was not going to rise. Whatever it was that had hit him – Thor had lost track, but he would find out, he would – had left a crater in his chest that was still smoking, and even as he stared Loki's laugh became a cough that sent a thin red mist into the air.

Loki's eyes flicked to the side and found him, too bright in his ghostly pale face. Bloodstained lips curved in a gruesome smile. "Ah," he said, in a voice thin from lungs that couldn't inflate (shredded in his chest), "It would be you."

Thor's throat felt like it was trying to close. "Loki," he managed, forcing himself into motion. "You are – we must-"

Loki was laughing again. It didn't sound so soft anymore, though, something raucous and broken and awful, harsh. His eyes drifted closed. "Oh, please," he said, voice a little thinner, a little quieter. "Spare me tearful goodbyes. It was always going to come to this sooner or later."

"No," said Thor, loudly, dropping to his knees beside Loki and reaching for, taking his brother's hand, limp in his. "I will find a healer, we will-"

Loki's eyes opened briefly, then fluttered shut again. "You were always a stubborn idiot," he said, oddly fondly. A bubble of blood swelled and burst between his lips. "Well," he said, voice even quieter. "I guess that's it then."

He shuddered, once, and died.

~.~

Loki's body, Thor thought, was very light. Like he had been made more of words than of flesh, and with all his words gone there was little else. He folded Loki into his arms and gathered him to his chest.

"Oh," someone said behind him. "Oh god." Thor tried to focus, to clear his mind which had suddenly gone foggy. "Thor, hey, Thor-"

"My brother is dead," he said, hollowly. "Loki is…dead. I do not know how…" He wanted to know. Wanted to know _how _and _who, _so he could fill up this space with rage and strike them down, crush them into less than a memory for daring to-

(In all likelihood one of his own, one of his friends. Better not to know, perhaps.)

He could almost hear Loki laughing at him. _That's always your solution, isn't it, _he heard in Loki's voice, gently amused. _Hit it. Everything is a battle to you, to be won by force of arms. _Thor jerked his mind back to the present and tried again to focus.

His shield companions, Earth's Avengers, were gathered around him. They stared at him, mute. Of course they did not know what to say, Thor thought, and there was a note of bitterness to his thoughts that surprised him. To them, Loki was a madman, was a danger, was a threat to be stopped. They had never seen Loki's bright, guileless smile when he worked out some new puzzle, or seen him with his head bent over some book with brows pulled together in perfect concentration, or had him fight at their side swift and clever and like an extension of himself-

Loki was so still. It was, Thor thought, the first time he'd held him unresisting in a long time, and he wished it weren't, wished that Loki would struggle and fight and snarl and _live. _

"Thor…I'm so sorry."

Steve. It was Steve, speaking, and his hand light on Thor's arm. Expression genuinely sympathetic.

"I didn't want this to happen," Thor said dully. _It was always going to come to this sooner or later, _Loki had said, but Thor hadn't known that, hadn't agreed to it or accepted it, and Loki wasn't _allowed _to make that decision without asking him. "I didn't want-"

He looked down at Loki, his head resting against Thor's chest. Quiet. Gone.

~.~

Loki had always said (irritable, frustrated, worried) that Thor was going to get himself killed young. "And then where will we be," he'd said, flinging his hands out wide, nimble fingers spread as if to illustrate his helplessness.

"Any trouble I get into, I know your tongue will talk me out of," Thor had said, clapping him heartily on the shoulder. "I fancy you could talk even death into letting me go, if it came to that."

Thor did not have Loki's gift with words. Speech did not flow easily or eloquently from his tongue. Persuasion was not as natural to him as breathing. Loki would have thought of some trick, some loophole – but Thor could think of nothing.

He could not work out what to do. Take Loki's body back to Asgard? Loki was a criminal there, well loved by all too few. Loki deserved…some kind of ceremony, something to mark his passing, but who would help him arrange a funeral befitting a Prince of Asgard, befitting his _brother?_ His mind felt thick and slow, as dull as Loki had always named him.

His friends hovered around him, anxious but never too close. Thor took little notice of their murmured offerings of sympathy. Steve attempted to speak to him, was gentle and quiet. "I never had a brother," he said. "But I've lost a lot of people. And even if…whatever else he did, he was still your brother. And I _am _sorry."

He had grieved for Loki once, and here he was, grieving again. When he'd had word that Loki still lived, the joy in his heart had been almost painful, even tempered by the grief of what he was doing. _I didn't lose him, _he'd thought. _I get another chance with him. _And now…

It seemed like maybe he'd always been losing Loki. Watching him slip through his fingers, and he hadn't held on tightly enough to stop it.

~.~

He dreamed of Loki laughing, and then he stood before him, pale and bloodied but whole. "A great joke, isn't it?" he said brightly. "One of my best, I think." Thor's tongue felt swollen and heavy in his mouth, locking all he wanted to say into his throat. Loki smirked at him, thin and sharp. "Have you worked it out yet, brother mine?"

"I do not like this game," Thor managed, choked and strangled.

"Oh," said Loki, with terrible gentleness, "You never did." His smile shifted, bright eyes gleaming with a touch of melancholy. "Thor. Best beloved Thor. Do you remember?"

"Remember what?" Thor asked. Loki tilted his head back, line of his neck long and graceful.

"Everything," he said softly. "Do you know, sometimes I wonder if I was ever here at all? I didn't always feel quite…real. Like if no one were watching I might cease to exist."

"Loki," Thor said, "Brother," and Loki was laughing again, head thrown back and eyes half closed. He looked young.

"When you get it," he said, "You will laugh too."

~.~

In the end, he found a boat on Midgard. It was not traditional, was not what he would have chosen, but it would do. Loki had so little, no riches or wealth to be piled around him. Thor found his throwing knives, a few books that Tony, of all people, offered wordlessly. "If this is about…having stuff to take with you to the…wherever," Tony said, when Thor stared at him, "They're not spellbooks or anything, but they might be. Interesting."

They launched the ship a little away from the city. Thor waded into the water to set it alight himself. He stared at it, waiting until he could no longer see his brother's makeshift bier among the flames.

His friends stood on the beach, silent and watchful and close, their concern and sadness for him and not for Loki, but that was the way it would be, Thor had had the world and Loki had had Thor, until he hadn't.

"I need to go back home," he said, heavily. "Heimdall will already know, but …for my mother, most of all. She always…she and Loki always…" His voice broke.

On Asgard, Frigga would be weeping, and Odin would be silent, and everywhere he looked would be reminders of Loki. On Asgard, he would have to face that he would never bring Loki home, never stand beside him again, never hear him laugh or make some cunning remark more often than not at Thor's expense.

That Loki, bright-eyed, silvertongued Loki, was well and truly gone.

~.~

Loki flickered at the edges of his vision, always just out of sight. He fancied, sometimes, that it was all some elaborate trick, and any day Loki would stand before him laughing, _Thor, did you really think _I… A test, perhaps. Like when he had made himself vanish as a child to see if anyone would notice because something in Loki did not quite know how to believe in affection. Perhaps all of this was one long punishment to see how far Thor's love would go and if he could only prove…

If Loki had always been the liar, Thor nonetheless knew their taste.

And he had never been convincing.


End file.
